Stitches
Written & Illustrated by David Small
Published by W.W. Norton

Y’know, I hope that one of these days some cartoonist comics along with a really hilarious memoir that we can put up alongside the Allison Bechdels, Art Spiegelmans and David Smalls of the world.  I like to laugh. But until then, I’ll continue to marvel at how moving the comic book form can be, even in the case of heartbreaking works like David Small’s Stitches.

Small, raised by an emotionally unavailable and harsh mother, suffers far more than the slings and arrows of a typical childhood.  After a growth on his neck is left untreated for three years, he winds up physically voiceless and scarred (the book’s title coming from the first time he sees the surgical wound), emotionally sullen and withdrawn from the world.  During several segments, stretched across his entire childhood, Small discovers tragic segments of his family history, turns to therapy to understand his familial relationships, and finds a voice through his art, but everything happens in reaction to the loveless, abusive upbringing endured during his childhood.

(more…)

If you like what you’ve read so far (c’mon, how can you not?) totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

Earlier this week, DC and Marvel both released their solicitations for the books they plan to sell in November of this year (and you can, as always, read them here and here).

I’ve always been fascinated with the solicitations, not only because I’ve been wrapped up in the ongoing soap operas of so many DC and Marvel books for so long and can’t wait to see what happens next, but also because of the partial snapshot they provide of the two Big Two companies and, to a lesser extent, the direct market and the U.S. comics industry in general.

This time I thought I’d pull out my abacus and do some counting and arithmetic to see which superheroes/franchises/intellectual properties were the most exploited by each company—that is, which ones were supporting the most books in a given month (Here, November 2010).

So I added up all of the books devoted to a single character or team to see which characters and/or teams had the most. Below are the list of those with four or more books apiece; where relevant, I counted spin-offs that were only kinda sorta related to the brand, but listed them separately (That is, I didn’t count Red Robin and Azrael as Batman books, but I did note that they are exploitations of the Batman brand).

Also, regarding my criteria here, I didn’t take into consideration whether a book was an ongoing, a miniseries or one-shot or whether it belonged to a sub-continuitiverse or something. I’m counting comics as cogs here, so a Howard Chaykin Batman special counts a Batman comic even if there won’t be another issue of it in December, and Ultimate Comics Spider-Man is still a Spider-Man comic book, even if that Spidey lives in a different fictional reality than the other Spider-Man.

So let’s take a look, after the jump.

(more…)

By Vaneta Rogers

SuperFogeys, one of the leading webcomics over at Th3rd World Studios, just made a few heads explode.

For loyal followers of the SuperFogeys story, today’s comic was a doozy. The ongoing series, which is a humorous yet dramatic look at a retirement home for superheroes and villains, just took a twist that few, if any, readers saw coming.

“Right now is when all the pieces of the story I’ve been building for four years finally come together,” said Brock Heasley, who creates the webcomic. “So far the reaction to the reveal has exceeded my wildest expectations — and they were pretty wild to begin with. I’ve been sitting on this idea of what my story is really all about for nearly four years and anticipating this moment.”

According to Heasley, this big reveal is actually a great time to jump on board with the comic, because the curtain of mystery has been pulled back, and now the real fun begins.

“This revelation both casts new light on everything that’s come before and points the way toward where the story of the SuperFogeys is headed next. One of the things the story has been marked by so far is a great deal of mystery and even, at some times, confusion. Now, I’m taking away the mystery and replacing it with something else — tension,” Heasley said.

“If you’re brand new to the SuperFogeys, then you can read the reveal and head immediately into the archives and find that things click into place in a very satisfying way,” he said. “I’ve been predicting a big run on the archives once this hit — even for longtime readers. But, hey, if archive reading’s not your bag, no worries. The big reveal tells you all you really need to know to enjoy what comes next.”

(For more on SuperFogeys, check out a story we did about the series over on the main site last year.)

So what’s the big reveal? It concerns the secret identity of Dr. Klein, who has been controlling the retirement home where the SuperFogeys live. What the characters in the story don’t know is that Dr. Klein is also the villain known only as The Third Man. But who is The Third Man?

“Dr. Klein has been sitting down with each of the Fogeys in turn, conducting short interviews and, well, generally messing with their heads,” Heasley said. “With [today's] final strip of Chapter 9, ‘All is Revealed,’ I’m pulling the veil back and showing just exactly what Dr. Klein/The Third Man is all about.”

And for those who have read the reveal, one post on the site by Chris Blanchard pretty much sums it up: “I’m stunned… speechless… wow!”

The biggest news about the comics section of the newspapers in the last few weeks was the announcement that Cathy Guisewite would be retiring her 30+ year strip Cathy.  In all that time in the funnies, Cathy and Cathy have made plenty of friends, fans, admirers and critics, leading to a rather wide variety of reactions to the news. Here’s a smattering:

“Before I even thought to congratulate the cartoonist or even wonder after why she was making this move, I’ll be honest: the first question that popped into my head was ‘Holy crap: how many papers is she in?’ The answer according to the syndicate is approximately 1400. That is the most papers having a spot open up without a legacy replacement since… Calvin and Hobbes, maybe?”

—Tom Spurgeon (The Comics Reporter) in a piece entitled “Ten initial     thoughts about Cathy’s End”

“‘Cathy’, which began in 1976, deserves credit for being well ahead of the chick-lit curve. Long before Bridget Jones was counting calories or Carrie Bradshaw was spending her rent money on Manolos, Cathy was twitching and sweating over the same bad habits.”

—Meredith Blake on one of the strip’s positives, in a piece for The New Yorker entitled “The Demise of Cathy”

“It’s the kind of greeting a Nazi hunter would give to Josef Mengele when he found him hiding behind a South American palm tree.”

—Stephen Pastis, Pearls Before Swine cartoonist, talking about a phone conversation with Guisewite in which he asked her permission to include her name in a strip. It’s part of a funny post demonstrating just what a good sense of humor Guisewite has.

“Ack! Cathy Ending! What Strip to Make Fun of Next?”

—Johanna Draper Carlson (Comics Worth Reading), in the headline to her post on the announcement

“Universal Uclick’s interview with Guisewite opened my eyes to the creator’s more or less overnight success and manic rush to hone her cartooning skills while working a day job in advertising. It’s honestly a pretty endearing story of the average employee breaking free from their career to follow a dream even if, as Guisewite says, ‘I’ve loved creating something that helps women feel they’re not alone. I’ve loved creating something that men will never completely understand.’

“You’re right on the money Ms. Guisewite, but you seem like a cool lady no matter how baffling I’ve found your unique brand of sweat beads and protruding tongues over the years.”

—Caleb Goellner (Comics Alliance)

“The strip began in 1976 at the height of the ‘women’s movement,’ but Cathy’s adventures and downfalls mostly centered around the self-torture women put themselves through to find a man. Although not always politically correct –and the notion of what was politically correct changed greatly during the strip’s 34 year run — this suffering was certainly grounded in reality.”

—Heidi MacDonald (The Beat), in the introduction preceding an interview with Guisewite

“In fact, even after a nearly nonstop, 34-year run of putting words in the mouth and anxieties in the mind of her alter ego, she’s hard-pressed during the course of an interview to say what the next four panels will look like — even though a deadline looms in less than 24 hours.”

—Adam Tschorn (Los Angeles Times), in his lede to his interview with Guisewite about the end of the strip

“But not everybody can be Wonder Woman or Brenda Starr. Though Cathy, who debuted at the height of ’70s-era feminism, never fit into the ‘Family Circus’ or ‘For Better or Worse’ domestic sphere. She was never wry like ‘The Boondocks’ and ‘Calvin and Hobbes,’ or political like ‘Doonsebury.’ Yet her mere existence, as the star of the first nationally syndicated strip by a woman, as a lady in the funny pages, is political in itself.”

—Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon’s Broadsheet

“Is Mary Beth Williams playing madlibs with ‘…feminist trailblazer’? That would explain her post entitled ‘Goodbye Cathy, feminist trailblazer.’”

—Lindsay Beyerstein, bigthink.com

“If we learned anything from Bill Amend’s partial retirement back in 2007 was that just because a comic strip targeting a particular demographic retires, doesn’t automatically mean another like-demographic comic strips are going to take its place.”

—Alan Gardner (The Daily Cartoonist), offering some analysis about what Cathy’s retirement could mean for funny pages and the cartoonists who seek to fill them

Sand Chronicles Vols 1 – 9
Story and art by Hinako Ashihara
Published by Viz Media
Review by Julie Opipari

Sand Chronicles is one of those series that creeps up on you, and once it’s got you hooked, it toys mercilessly with your emotions. I always make sure there is a tissue near at hand when I am reading a new volume, because I always get teary eyed. The series can be agonizingly painful, as the young protagonist, Ann, struggles to deal with the most dreaded experience a young child could ever imagine – the suicide of her emotionally fragile mother.

After divorcing her husband, Ann’s mother Miwako is forced to move back to the rural village where she was born. She moves back home with her parents, and tries to move forward building a new life for herself and her daughter. She can’t hide the fact that she hates the backwater village of Shimane, and that all of her dreams have been brutally shattered now that she’s back. Once she found the freedom of Tokyo, she wasn’t supposed to ever have to endure life in the country again. Caught in a cesspool of despair, Miwako gives up on life, and more tragically, she gives up on Ann.

What Ann’s mother leaves Ann is a lifetime of guilt and remorse. This last, achingly selfish act sends the young Ann spinning hopelessly out of control. It colors her relationships with her grandparents, her classmates, and her closest friends. Ann must grapple with her confusion and her feelings of unworthiness. If even her mother abandoned her, does she ever deserve to be loved?

I loved this series. It’s told in eight bittersweet volumes, with a ninth volume comprised of side stories that nicely compliment the main plot. Ann’s struggles to lead a normal life touched me deeply; it’s rare that book leaves me weepy after every volume, and embarrassingly, some of the tears were because I had reached the last page! Each new installment of Sand Chronicles was special, and I waited to read them until I had the time to savor every page. Though the reading material is certainly heavy and depressing at times, it also has one other element that makes it very, very special. The entire series is also full of hope, hope that Ann will one day overcome the shadow of her mother’s death and learn to live life the way she is meant to – filled with happiness and love.

When Julie Opipari isn’t mucking around the barn, she can be found trying to make a dent in the massive pile of manga that keeps following her home from the bookstore.  Not wiling to admit she has a problem, she blissfully continues to anticipate the latest releases despite the cries of agony from her credit card.  She cheerfully blames her addiction on the stresses of college and post traumatic work disorder, and is grateful that her family grumbles only occasionally about the amount of time she spends buried in her books. In addition to reading Your Manga Minute every Wednesday, you can read more of Julie’s work on her blog, Manga Maniac Cafe.

Well, this is odd: according to a sentence in Dark Horse Comics senior managing editor Scott Allie’s comments in the “Horsepower” column in the back of this week’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Riley one-shot, Angel comics are returning to the publisher in 2011. IDW has had the rights to Angel since 2005.

Here’s exactly what was written in the note:

“What’s next for the Whedon clan and Dark Horse? How about a Dollhouse comic written by Jed and Maurissa, who wrote key episode of the show, and the return of the Angel series to Dark Horse in late 2011, in tandem with our Buffy Season 9 relaunch?”

That’s pretty big news to announce within the text of an in-house promotional page at the back of a comic, something pretty easy for a reader to skip over. On IDW’s official forums, chief creative officer and editor-in-chief Chris Ryall wrote, “We’ll be addressing this soon, so please bear with us. Thanks, for your patience and your support. Back soon.”

Picture of the column and potential Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 spoilers after the jump.

(more…)

[Via Press Release]

For decades comics have largely been viewed as light-hearted and amusing stories told through simple line art. But in recent years, comics have moved from the cultural fringes into the artistic and literary mainstream. The Los Angeles Times recently added a Graphic Novel category to its slate of annual Book Prizes, citing the medium as “an expanding part of the book landscape, both aesthetically and commercially.”

“Comics at the Crossroads: Art of the Graphic Novel”, on view at Maryhill Museum of Art September 18 – November 15, 2010, showcases the work of 40 Pacific Northwest artists who are established stars and emerging lights in the comic art universe. Artists such as Joelle Jones, Michael Avon Oeming, Mike Allred, and Craig Thompson will all have something on display.

(more…)

Jess Peacock returns with a new pair from The Crawlspace. First up . . .

Review: Go, Mutants! by Larry Doyle

As a kid growing up in central Ohio, the weekends were a very distinctive time for me. There was no school obviously, but Fridays and Saturdays throughout my childhood also provided a specifically unique education. With horror host instructors such as Big Chuck and Little John on channel 8, Super Host on channel 43, and the Ghoul on channel 61, I was emotionally raptured into an otherworld filled with monsters from the farthest reaches of space and beyond. Others could have their football games and Wide World of Sports; I was more concerned with blithely living in a universe filled with giant lizards, Ro-Men, She-Creatures, and horrors on various party beaches.
(more…)

Ides of Blood #1
Written by Stuart C. Paul
Illustrated by Christian Duce
Colored by Carlos Badilla
Lettered by Johnny Lowe
Cover art by Michael Geiger
Published by DC/Wildstorm

So here’s the premise behind Ides of Blood: during Caesar’s rule of the Roman empire, vampires are real and have recently begun to move from life as slaves to members of society, including the series protagonist Valens, head of the Praetorian guard.  Amidst various political infighting, a vampire killer is on the loose and Valens must bring the murderer to justice.

(more…)

Hensin A Go Go, baby!

It’s looking like life is viewtiful, as Viewtiful Joe and Dormammu are joining the cast of Marvel vs. Capcom 3!

Viewtiful Joe, from the Capcom side of things, is an ordinary guy named Joe, who is turned into a high-flying super-sidekick when he’s drawn into “the movie world” by the hero Captain Blue. For those who played the Gamecube and PS2 versions of the game, Joe was able to speed up and slow down time by increasing the frame speed of the movie world.

Dormammu, meanwhile, is one of the greatest foes of the Sorcerer Supreme — a flame-headed sorcerer from another dimension, Dormammu is some bad mojo for the Marvel Universe, and judging on the trailers from the game, it looks like he may be a Doctor Doom- or Thanos-level threat for more than one universe.

The game — which will have Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Deadpool, Wolverine, Hulk, Doctor Doom and Super-Skrull from the Marvel Universe, and Ryu, Chun-Li, Morrigan, Dante, Chris Redfield, Felicia, Trish and Amaterasu from the Capcom side — is due out in the Spring of 2011.

[Image via Marvel]

“It’s impossible to reproduce a novel’s deep characterizations and nuances of plot development in a comic book format…I don’t see how a novel could be done that way—except by boiling down the novel to a few incidents and characters and tossing away almost all of the depth and plot development”: That’s science fiction writer Ben Bova making one of the two major statements this week that have raised the hackles of many on Team Comics. Bova was writing about the future of books and literacy in general, and made an unfortunate detour into comics for a few paragraphs, in which he said something silly. There are a few factors that explain why Bova may say something so silly. First, he doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp on what graphic novels actually are, defining them as “Essentially…comic books for adults,” which, at best, is true of only some of the things we refer to when we say “graphic novels.”  Second, he’s a lifelong, career prose writer, and thus likely sees the publishing world from that perspective, so that only the word half of the comics equation registers with him. And third, he is old. None of these are excuses for saying something as ignorant as that in public—he is, after all, completely ignoring the fact that art can also be used to reveal deep characterization and plot nuance—but they at least help explain why he might have said it.

“Today’s superhero is too much like an action hero who participates in non-stop violence; he’s aggressive, sarcastic and rarely speaks to the virtue of doing good for humanity”: And that’s the other statement, part of psychologist Sharon Lamb’s conclusions of a study of how the media and marketers package masculinity to boys presented on Sunday to the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. Coverage and reaction have popped up here, here, here, here, here and some half-dozen other places so far as well, but I think Tom Chivers of The Telegraph offered my favorite response so far.  After pointing out the obvious that of course superheroes are usually terrible role models—box office champs include alcoholic, narcissistic arms developer and dealer Iron Man and violent psychotic vigilante Batman—the study’s conclusion of “today’s superheroes” is flawed by the fact that today’s superheroes are the same one of the 1940s and ’60s: “If Dr Lamb really wanted to criticise modern superheroes, she could point out that they don’t exist: nobody seems to have thought up a really interesting new one in 25 years.”

“If we don’t break out of the big buff guys with swords, and guys in tights, and space marines in armor, we’re going to get marginalized the way that comic books have been in the United States”: So said Disney video game developer Warren Spector, talking about the video game industry.

You guys aren’t sick of talking about Scott Pilgrim‘s box office performance yet, are you?: Here’s another analysis, this one from the LA Times and focusing on Scott Pilgrim as “a comic book movie,” despite the vast differences between it and other comic book movies like Kick-Ass, The Losers, Watchmen, The Spirit, Iron Man and The Dark Knight. Blogger Heidi MacDonald has the best take: “nothing can take away Bryan Lee O’Malley’s charming, thrilling, hilarious generation-defining graphic novels and the wonderful movie they inspired.” Amen.

“Skeletor as envsisioned as a Road Sorcerer who dispense evil on his Panthor cycle”: That’s part of the description of Shane McDermott’s redesign for He-Man’s archenemy on Superhero Cocoa. Check out all of the redesigns—including Baby Skeletor and Hipster Skeletor— here. (Via Project: Rooftop)

“Penny Arcade surprised to find that rape jokes offend people”: That’s the headline of this story, to which I have no commentary to add, because I am not surprised to learn that that’s a touchy subject.

“The History of Aquaman Explained”: At Comics Alliance, Curt Franklin and Chris Haley recount the history of Aquaman in just nine extremely wordy panels. I, um, I didn’t read the words on top, as there were one million of them in each panel, but the pictures and dialogue were very funny.

“5 comic books that will see you through Scott Pilgrim withdrawal”: All of the comics on this i09 list are pretty good and/or ones I enjoyed reading, but I’m not sure any of them qualify as all that Scott Pilgrim-like…even by their definition of “the Scott Pilgrim aesthetic” as “disaffected young people in totally inexplicable supernatural and scifi situations.”  Off the top of my head, and looking around at the comics in my own long boxes and book shelves, I’d suggest Oni’s own Black Metal, Sharknife and Peng! as the closest to Scott Pilgrim overall, while Lost at Sea and Project: Superior give you more Bryan Lee O’Malley (just a single short story in the case of the latter).  Sailor Moon, School Rumble and Kill Me, Kiss Me among the many, many manga and manwha that similarly use fighting as a symbol of young love, Sidescrollers similarly uses some arcade-logic and plenty of video game references and, I don’t know, King City has an all-around-awesome-in-its-own-way-the-way-Scott-Pilgrim-was-also-awesome-in-its-own-way thing going on.

Fogtown
Written by Andersen Gabrych
Illustrated by Brad Rader
Lettered by Sean Konot
Published by DC/Vertigo

Another Vertigo crime thriller, and another faux-noir protagonist being carried along by a series of credulity-stretching plot twists.  In Fogtown, Frank Grissel is, his closeted homosexuality aside, yet another in a long line of Chandler-lite detectives.  Grissel’s hired to find a missing daughter, but as is the way in these stories, he’s set up to be a patsy and refuses to be anybody’s patsy.  You’ve seen it before.

(more…)

News broke Tuesday evening on Hollywood industry news blog Deadline that Mad Men actress January Jones has been cast as Emma Frost in next summer’s X-Men: First Class.

Back in June, rumors put She’s Out of My League actress Alice Eve in the role, a move that we thought made sense given how that actress, like Frost, is “blonde, pretty and sort of hoity-toity looking” — all qualities certainly possessed by Jones as well.

With production set to start this coming Monday in London, this announcement seems to cap the X-Men: First Class casting process, news of which has kept bloggers in posts all summer long. In the comic books, Frost is currently co-leader of the X-Men along with boyfriend Cyclops, but has a much longer history as the villainous White Queen of the Hellfire Club.

(more…)

Back in May, CLiNT Magazine was announced, a joint venture from Kick-Ass and Wanted writer Mark Millar and Titan Magazines. In an appropriate move given Millar’s close Hollywood ties (Nemesis is in the works to be adapted as a film directed by Tony Scott), it’s being previewed via a teaser trailer:

(more…)

You know how the best part of Little Lulu collections are the stories that prominently feature Tubby Thompkins? (Do you all know that, or is it merely a matter of opinion?) Well, if you feel as strongly about Tubby as I do, then you’re probably just as excited about Dark Horse’s latest Little Lulu digest, which should be all killer and no filler.

Little Lulu’s Pal Tubby Vol. 1: The Castaway and Other Stories will feature the first six issues of 1952 Little Lulu spin-off Tubby in a $16, 225-page trade.

It looks like a smaller week all around, but any week with over 200 pages of John Stanley Tubby comics seems like a good one to me. Anyway, what else has Comics got for us this week? Let’s take a look.

1 for $1: Hellboy: Seed of Destruction: More ridiculously cheap reprints from Dark Horse! This week you can get the very first twenty-some pages Mike Mignola’s massive Hellboy epic, with this reprint of the first chapter of the first miniseries, covered, drawn and co-written by Mignola, with John Byrne helping out on words and Mark Chiarello on colors. Also available this week is 1 For $1: Usagi Yojimbo, featuring the dawn of Stan Sakai’s modern, ongoing comics classic feudal-animal story.

Avengers & The Infinity Gauntlet #1: The unlikely creative team of Brian Dean Clevinger (Atomic Robo) and Brian Churilla (The Anchor) unite to tell a new version of a Marvel classic in this four-part miniseries.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Riley: BTVS TV and comic writer Jane Espenson scripts this ove-rsized one-shot featuring the title character’s one-time boyfriend and offering more details of his role in the three-and-a-half-years-long (so far!) “Season Eight.” Espenson’s working with the Willow and Fray art team of Karl Moline and Andy Owens, and you can see a brief preview of their work on the book here.

(more…)

If you like what you’ve read so far (c’mon, how can you not?) totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

Marvel’s November solicitations, minus most covers, have popped up on Web site Comics Continuum, and it looks to be a newsworthy month for the publisher.

(more…)

Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

For a few weeks now, rumors have lingered that Supergirl artist Jamal Igle would be soon moving to fellow female-led DC Comics title Birds of Prey. There’s been no official announcement, and Igle has declined comment on his Twitter, but posted a rather direct clue on his MobileMe site this past weekend, as noticed by Bleeding Cool — a video, titled “Birds of Prey,” with the words “Gail Simone,” “Jamal Igle” and “December 2010.”

It’s since been removed.

Barring it all being an elaborate prank, there surely seems to be smoke to this fire, but as always, don’t take too much stock in anything until there’s an official announcement from the publisher. Which seems like it may be soon.

Igle is still with Supergirl as of November’s issue #58, previewed by DC in their monthly solicitations and released today.